I am a volunteer firefighter in the mountains of Colorado, USA. We use D4H – Readiness & Response for managing many aspects of the department. We record incidents, exercises, events and attendance in D4H. We manage our inventory (for multiple stations, apparatus and personnel) and we maintain individual certifications / qualifications, and more, in D4H. Our members use D4H a lot.

D4H is a very powerful system with a lot of features, and its website is somewhat overwhelming on any mobile device, especially a mobile phone. Our membership needed something less powerful, an application for the tasks they perform on the go; viewing activities, setting attendance, communicating with other members, and updating off duty.

I created Response Utilities to allow our membership to interact with D4H. Response Utilities is a simple interface targeted at individual members, allowing them to view upcoming activities (and set their attendance), review past activities (incidents and more), and communicate with other members of the agency. Members who default to “on duty” (e.g. volunteers) are also able to easily set their “off duty” times.

I hate breaking apps, especially when I know they are being used in the field. A crash in the field can mean significant lost time and data. Not good! That said, as platforms continually change under the application (and their languages mature) even rebuilding an app (with no changes from me) can break it. I don’t release often enough because of the fear of breaking a production app. Beta testers help reduce that stress, and allow me to make progress. Please participate in beta testing, when you can afford:

I’ve been working to update Triangulate on Android, and that include porting it to Kotlin (Google / Android replacement for Java.) In sort, I’ve changed every line.

Further I’ve worked to improve handling for offline (it was not as simple as I’d first considered, and testing did not uncover that.) Finally I’ve added a first attempt at allowing the devices sensors to help determine a (rough) bearing, enabling some usage even without the (more accurate) handheld compass.

I would appreciate some help checking it out before I overwrite the existing application with this version. Please check it out at:

That said, Notes Collector was developed based on Timestamped Field Notes in order to migrate to more flexible internal infrastructure, to allow some experimentation on new features (without destabilizing TFN), and to more easily support more platforms (iOS, Android and Web.)

Here are some suggestions/requests I’ve heard from you over the years:

Allow an optional photograph to be added to a note item.

Allow an optional location (latitude / longitude) to be added to a note item.

The current Neukadye field applications do not fully synchronize the user’s data, they effectively “offload it”, backing it up to the cloud for safe keeping and future processing.

The assumption (way back when these apps were first designed) was you’d want to collect the data in the field, but then copy it off the device onto a “real computer” as quickly as possible. A lot has changed since then. Networks are better and more prevalent (even in the field), mobile devices are more like real computers, and some people only have mobile devices.

Notes Collector is a new app designed with these things in mind. It is a similar application (similar to Timestamped Field Notes) however it synchronizes its data between your devices (and the cloud) in all directions in realtime (when online.)

If you collect on your phone or tablet it’ll be available on all your devices, and available to computers via the cloud. You could even record notes from multiple devices at the same time, into the same event.

Some benefits of the new approach:

Start a set of notes on any device, and pick them up (or continue them) on any other.

Have your notes saved to the cloud in realtime, when online. (The application still works offline. Offline notes synchronize automatically when network connectivity is reestablished.)

Keyword Set and Keyword updates are automatically shared between devices.

I would welcome beta testers for the iOS version of Notes Collector. Please contact me if interested.

The following applications are in the process of being beta tested before release. If you have interest in these applications; any issues and/or features, please download the beta application (via Test Flight) and provide feedback to info@neukadye.com :